Cap Hit Due To Ricky Williams' Retirement Owners, Before I get into the ruling, I just want all the owners to know that I’ve been upda...
Cap Hit Due To Ricky Williams' Retirement
Owners,
Before I get into the ruling, I just want all the owners to know that I’ve been updating our web pages athttp://www.geocities.com/nyofacefootball/. Your team pages here will take precedence over our Sportsline site since they should reflect the daily transactions. Since I’m blocked out of Sportsline fantasy sites by work, the easiest way for me to update team pages and league transactions is by uploading them to http://www.geocities.com/nyofacefootball/. I’ve recently updated the rules athttp://www.geocities.com/nyofacefootball/offseason.htm (but it’s still not finished). J Now, onto the serious issue…
The one thing the league needs to have is integrity or else we'll have owners dropping like flies. That means having rules in place and applying them. Since I have a relation to all the owners in the league whether by blood, marriage or work, and since I’m also a team owner in addition to being the commissioner, the worst thing I could do is to give preferential treatment to anyone, especially my team. (I thought about finding a loophole when I “lost” the 2003 championship by 2 points after a Yahoo recalculation but thought better otherwise. Still it was tough giving Patrick the cash over the summer. Lucky franchise! J )
If we're asking "What's fair?" then all we need to do is apply the rules in place. There seems to already be a rule in place for a player retiring - 100% cap hit for the current season and 20% in the next year. Ress' team currently stands to take a $15.00 cap hit in 2004 and a $3.00 cap hit in 2005.
I warned everyone early in the 2003 Auction Draft that the higher the salary, the higher the cap hit. (PER “Auction2 6/25 Conference #1 Transcript” (Sent 6/26/03 9:08 AM).
jonjo5 (10:24:33 PM): i'm thinking of assiging accelerated cap hits when you release, trade a player, or he retires
markymarkf (10:24:33 PM): what???
edgarallans (10:24:38 PM): No more rule changes! hehehe
markymarkf (10:24:42 PM): LOL
jonjo5 (10:24:46 PM): seriously
jonjo5 (10:24:53 PM): it'lll make it tougher to trade
improvise707 (10:24:54 PM): hahaha
jonjo5 (10:25:04 PM): the big contract folks
jonjo5 (10:25:16 PM): i'll allow owners to change the contract years when all this is done
edgarallans (10:25:47 PM): Hmmm, ok by me
improvise707 (10:25:57 PM): that's coo
jonjo5 (10:26:00 PM): sorry, but reading through my material i decided to lean the other way
markymarkf (10:26:00 PM): cool
jonjo5 (10:26:14 PM): it'll reflect more what happens in the nfl
jonjo5 (10:26:19 PM): that's all i'm concerned about
jonjo5 (10:26:25 PM): and harder to dump the best players
The rule change I implemented after the Michael Vick injury last year was the “100% cap hit” on 8/18 in anticipation of Mark cutting him, then resigning him for less. It really didn’t affect Mark’s team’s chances to compete because having more cap space would not have really put him in a better situation; there weren’t any studs to be signed. Mark was still able to sign what turned out to be the best Free Agent available in the season, Rudi Johnson. It just prevented Mark from trading Michael Vick (and the other owners from trading their studs). But I seriously doubt that Mark wanted to or would have traded him.
The thing I was worried about back in 2003 was that in the 2004 Auction Draft, Mark would not have had bidding competition for Vick’s services. I didn’t have time last preseason to check on the potential cap statuses of all teams. We may have foreseen in Preseason 2003 Team Urlacher not resigning Kurt Warner and Eddie George for $10.70 and $7.30 respectively to free up $14.30 in cap space, but who knew? If I hadn’t cut Miami ($7.10) during the season last year, if Melvin hadn’t cut William Green ($4.30) and the Philadelphia Defense ($4.10), we’d have $7.00 and $8.90 available. If Leo resigned Warner and George, he’d have $12.30 in cap space this preseason. Mark could’ve signed Vick for a lot less than $12.00 (chopping off at least $5.50 in Vick’s salary) with those teams needing to sign other players to fill out the required roster.
The thing about the players we signed for over $10 was that we signed them because we thought they would be the cornerstone of our franchises. In the NFL, these players usually have No-Trade clauses and usually are not dealt away. In the case of Vick’s injury, the Falcons would have released Vick if he were not capable of playing. But just because he’s injured, they’re not about to renegotiate his contract. Also, if the Falcons had waived Vick, you can bet another NFL team would have claimed him and given Vick the same type of deal.
This past offseason in the NFL, they did have a blockbuster deal wherein a young stud RB, Clinton Portis, was dealt for a young stud CB, Champ Bailey. The one change I can implement to allow teams to trade “franchise” players is that teams will be allowed to trade a “franchise” player but must get one in return.
But to get to the bottom of our Ricky Williams situation, I initially was using 20% as the cap hit and Ress’ team page showed $28.70 as his available cap space. That wasn’t a mistake because I thought I had put that stipulation in place. As we should all know by now, when an NFL team waives or trades a player, the team gets hit with the “accelerated bonus” (the remaining signing bonus that has not been included in the previous years’ salaries). But it’s never 100% of the player’s salary that year. My full intent was not to hit a team with a 100% cap hit when a player retires. The “franchise player” retiring has already put the team in a big hole plus it doesn’t work that way in the NFL.
BUT, and you knew it was coming, having checked the rules I put out on our Geocities web page and all the emails from last year, I can’t find anything that says “Retired Players” get a 20% cap hit (or anything less than a 100% cap hit).
I put out the compromises last week as you should have read. I didn’t suggest these because I like Ress more than Mark, or I want to make it tougher for Vince, Mark, Melvin, Tony and me to win a division, or I don’t think Ress has the managerial skills to win even if he had all the cap space in the league available. I put them out because it doesn’t work that way in the NFL, I mistakenly missed putting that stipulation in our rules, and Mark and any other owner can call me to task since we have the “100% cap hit” rule for $10-and-above players.
My formula for the cap hits needs to be reworked in light of the Ricky situation (I thought I’d have time but it came up so quickly) and I’ve already got that down in a new spreadsheet template. However, with the lower tier players getting 50% and 25% cap hits, it doesn’t make sense to give Ricky Williams a 50% cap hit or less. Ress suggested that the 100% cap hit be standard for all players. My question to you is why doesn’t everyone have the same salary??? I could have just assigned all players a $1.00 salary and have everyone pick using the standard Snake-Draft system. That brings you to the next question – Why assign salaries at all if they’re all the same???
Obviously, they don’t do that in the NFL. The way it works is the better a player, the higher the salary, and the higher the signing bonus (up front guaranteed money to allow the stud player to buy a mansion, an Escalade, a trip to an exotic location and a couple of hotties to keep him company). The higher the signing bonus, the higher the accelerated cap hit when a player is traded or waived. That’s why we have the 3 tiers. We could’ve implemented more tiers or even tiers by position, but that’s too much of a headache for everyone.
So here’s my ruling:
So here’s my ruling:
We keep the $18 cap hit due Ricky Williams ($15 in 2004 and $3 in 2005) but apply them equally over those 2 years. That means a $9 cap hit for Ress in 2004 and 2005. Although it gives Ress an extra $6 this year, the $9 hit in 2005 will still be tough to take. The $9 cap hit this year is bigger than the 50% cap hit of $7.50 but it’s less than $15.
The basis for the ruling is that it was never the commissioner’s intent to invoke a 100% cap hit for retired players because it doesn’t work that way in the NFL.
Executive Committee members, feel free to object to my ruling. If you guys veto me 4-0, I’ll stand by that. I think that check-and-balance is fair. I feel strongly about my ruling but if all 4 of you are in agreement, then I’ll concede.
the commish
NYOFACE Football League
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